"Don't say I didn't warn you~!"

The voice came from a different point in space, and though it was already within Yuriko's reach, she didn't notice the micro speakers until the sound came out. It wasn't as if she wasn't looking, but the fact that the design of the speakers, even their outward appearance, was different from the last two she destroyed. In fact, none of the three speakers were similar in any way save for the fact that they transmitted sound from somewhere. Perhaps if she had time, she could focus and trace the light waves that somehow connected the speakers, but there was no direct line that she could follow, unlike the devices within Dragon Fall City. Well, either that or her Anima perception at the Actualisation Stage was more deficient compared to her current perception than she anticipated.

Either way, she paid no heed to the voice, nor did she bother wasting Intent to slice the thing in half. No, she was more preoccupied with fighting against the realm's suppression as she tried to cross boundaries to reach the maze. The thickness of the air was about twice as much as when she first encountered it earlier, but as with that one, it was easy enough to get through with a simple application of Invisible Edge tuned to cut nonphysical barriers. It did take a couple of seconds to tune her Edge, and in a fight, that was a long time considering actions and reactions were measured in fractions of a second. Well, it was nothing practice wouldn't fix.

When she finally pushed through the resistance…

"RAAAGH!"

It was to the sight of an enormous, grey-skinned humanoid roaring at her from a dozen paces away. Her perception was blocked by the partition and only when she stepped through could she see what was around her, and the abrupt appearance of an enemy only startled her for a short moment. Even that was enough for the thing to close. A fist that was wider than her hips shot towards her, the knuckles surrounded by a shockwave and a vapour cone.

Yuriko threw herself to the side, rather inelegantly but she smoothly recovered her balance after a single roll. The fist slammed into the ground, and the shockwave perpetuated through the ground. With her kinesis, she pushed herself off the ground, and not a moment too soon since the ground shattered. Shards of rock, dirt, and pebbles exploded into the air and bounced off her Anima armour, but she also moved with the hit to move her body away from the monster's follow-up strike. She landed on her toes, spun around to dodge the blow by a hair, but the shockwave was stronger than she expected and threw her off balance.

He—for it was certainly male—continued to press the attack. She absently noted the near-invisible speaker continued to taunt her choices, but she ignored it as nothing more than a distraction. She examined her foe, noting his dimensions, patterns, and apparent strength, then slashed a probing Invisible Edge towards his head.

The monster didn't even flinch as the Edge cut open his cheek and eye. His blood didn't even spray. It seeped out, then reversed direction back into the creature's flesh, and the skin and cut muscle knitted itself back together even before he could take a step.

"Grahhh!"

The monster yelled, greenish spittle sprayed from his dark lips. The creature was nearly twice her height, and about three or so times wider. The spittle landed on the dirt and sizzled as it melted the stones.

Inexplicably, she wasn't in the maze. Rather, she was in a large-ish chamber quite reminiscent of a cavern. She could see a tunnel behind the creature, so maybe she was in the labyrinth's antechamber after all.

"Impressive! Quite a good showing, how unexpected, Miss Lawson, to think you've concealed your Altered Power so skillfully. What is it? Five, six, distinct power sets? You must have Altered when you were four? What, you just got your last, vanity Alteration so you chose to be popular? How insecure, huh? Ah, you weren't half bad-looking then, weren't you…?"

The micro speaker rambled on and on, and despite herself, Yuriko couldn't help but listen. Even if she tried to ignore his voice, it was like a worm burrowing into a fruit, nearly impossible to dislodge unless she focused on the task. But even so, the mere fact that she put her attention to it made it all the more annoying to ignore.

Another momentary distraction that even all of her consciousness strands were trapped in. She noticed, almost too late, the monster's trap. He tried to grab her arm, and when she dodged at the last second, his spittle fell on her like a drizzling rain. Her Anima armour protected her body but the spittle, dreadfully acidic, ate into her Anima anyway.

"Oi, oi, Mauler! Don't ruin the merchandise!"

A flash of annoyance and Yuriko conjured a sunshard. She threw it at the monster's head, saw it eat through flesh and bone. The Radiant energy provoked an immediate guttural growl, and maybe a wince of pain. The sunshard embedded into the thing's cheek and probably into its mouth. The Radiant energy burned and consumed flesh, then fueled its own growth.

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But the creature—Mauler—regenerated flesh almost as quickly as the shard could consume it. She conjured a couple more, took Radiant energy for her body's stores, and forged her Radiant weapon. She infused her Ennoia of the Bladeless Sword into the shard, though it was ill-fitting, and blasted it into Mauler's sternum. The shard, preceded by an Edge, carved into the breastbone. The sunshard embedded into the lungs and heart then began to burn.

"OW!" Mauler's gravelly voice exclaimed. "Well, the merchandise certainly isn't making it easy." Though his voice was rough, his accent was polished and clean, more akin to a gentleman than the monster he looked. "Ah, it's those confused eyes. Yes, I can speak. No, I don't just scream, and yes, I am trying to eat you."

Yuriko paused during his monologue, but he didn't stop moving. He tried to grab her again, but she clicked her tongue, twisted out of the line of his attack, and slammed a fist to deflect his hand away. It was like she struck bedrock. Her Anima armour cushioned her hand, and her Radiant physique handled the rest of the rebounding force, but she struck him hard enough that his hand, his whole arm for that matter, rocketed away. She stepped inside his reach and slammed a heel onto his knee. The joint folded backwards from her blow and simultaneously allowed her to take distance. The sunshard embedded into his face and his sternum had fizzled out by that point and left large craters of empty flesh behind. Not for long, however, and the muscle and bone twisted towards itself and filled the vacuum.

"That really hurt," Mauler commented. "I haven't experienced such pain in a long time. Give me more. Let me…feel."

A shiver ran down her spine at the sight of his ecstatic visage. She huffed and jumped away, angling her trajectory towards the exit tunnel. She could dance with this tough monster for a long while, and if she didn't have something more urgent to do, she would have relished the chance to fight such a handy training dummy, but she didn't have much time. She should stop playing.

Well, she mostly wasn't. But she couldn't help testing a new foe no matter what happened. Instinct warred with sensibility but she was able to rein in her pride. She devoted a couple of strands of consciousness to block the speaker's chatter, humming to herself the entire time. Another couple of strands were focused on her Anima perception, and she examined the chamber. The rest of her focus was on Mauler. She analysed how quickly he moved, how strong his blows were, and how fast he recovered from his wounds. It was longstrides faster than Recovery technique, but she wondered if there were any side effects to his healing. She couldn't be sure, but his skin didn't look quite as healthy as before she hurt him, and his torso looked lumpier.

She wondered if she should manifest a sunblade instead of playing with shards or slicing with her fingers or air. Her incarnation body, despite being devoted to swordplay, had not actually wielded a sword since she arrived in Astoria, at least, not one meant to actually kill. Using the sabres, epees, foils, and blunted swords from the clubs didn't count.

Or, she could simply bypass the brute and head into the labyrinth, right? But only if she wanted to be harassed while she rescued her fellow clubmates. Only if she failed at actually putting the gentlemanly monster down. He did say he wanted to eat her, and she was sure he didn't mean the way Heron and Gwendith did.

With a rather feral grin, she danced around his attacks, refrained from counter-attacking while she formed her weapon. A few moments later, she had a sunblade in hand, a single-edged, straight blade that was about the length of an arming sword, though it was no longer the perfect image of the Empire's sideblades since she used a simpler crossguard rather than the circular guard that latched on to Plasma Casters.

"Hoh, so you're going to stick me with that, aren't you?" Mauler said. "Bring it on, girl. Put it in me."

So she did, sort of. She twisted away from a punch and cut into his wrist as she did so. The sunblade carved into his skin like a hot knife through butter, and he groaned in pain, though it didn't really hamper his movements. He swiped with his other limb, tried to kick her, and as a last resort, tried a tackle.

She used Invisible Edge to nearly sever his arm, if only the Edge didn't cut so finely he would have lost the limb. Instead of cutting cleanly through, his flesh healed behind the Edge, and when her current favourite technique passed through the limb, it was as if nothing had happened. It was both infuriating, and fascinating to watch, and she was somewhat happy to find flaws in her technique since it meant she could address it. Flaws she didn't know about wouldn't be fixed, and who knew if it would cause problems in the future?

She still had eight strands of Swordlight, and she wasn't about to squander them considering they were her ticket out of the subspace. That left using Radiance, even if the damage was too fleeting.

Think! What could she do to put him down? Striking at his head, his centre of consciousness might do the trick. For that matter…

As she dodged another blow, she utilised her Animakinesis to slam into his chin. Used offensively, her Anima created a glowing construct that was unmistakable. Mauler took it on without flinching, though she detected he actually tucked his head down and tensed his neck muscles. Still, it proved a useful enough feint.

Her sunblade slid into his knee, and he roared in pain. She twisted the blade and widened the wound, and before he could slam a backhand at her head, she leaned down—handily avoiding the blow—then directly infused Radiance and Intent into the wound.

Burn and consume the tendons and ligaments!

The Radiance, instead of burning what was around it, spread and followed her directions. His physique was unknown, but a humanoid body had enough similarities that her experience as a warrior, coupled with her errant studies of human anatomy at school and through the Network, helped pinpoint the vulnerabilities. Mauler's knee folded and he collapsed to the side. She danced around his flailing limbs, slapped away some that would have made her follow-up attack more complicated, stabbed the sunblade into the other knee, and infused as much Radiant energy as the first blow.

Then she twirled around behind him, stabbing the sunblade up the back of his skull, and essentially lobotomised him. She left the sword there to cook his brain, then ran towards the tunnel. Scarlett was still waiting.

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